


Never Supposed to Leave

by bluemoodblue



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Murder, F/M, Found Family, Taako in Raven's Roost
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 07:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16081061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/pseuds/bluemoodblue
Summary: "She asks again: What happened?And he says: It must have been the elderberries.She frowns. She tells him that his audience was poisoned with arsenic."Taako is in Raven's Roost when his plans fall to pieces. There are worse places to rebuild.





	Never Supposed to Leave

**Author's Note:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Ok but what if the glamour springs incident was at ravens roost
> 
>  
> 
> Since I'm bringing some of my tumblr writing to ao3, I decided to move this one over as well - it's here because I'd like to play with the idea more in the future!

Taako doesn’t know what happened. 

He knows that something went wrong. He knows that he’s been in this windowless room for hours, arms secured behind him by a rope on a hard wooden chair. He knows that whatever comes next, he isn’t going to like it. 

He shifts in his chair. It’s not a comfortable feeling, to be at such a disadvantage.

A woman enters the room. She’s pretty, Taako observes, and she’s angry. She’d probably rather punch him than ask questions, but she seems to have questions first.

She asks him about Kalen. He doesn’t know a Kalen. It’s not the answer she wants to hear.

_ So what happened out there _ , she asks. Taako plays dumb; it’s worked before. But he just watched an entire crowd of people begin to collapse in front of him, and his voice shakes.

He takes a deep breath. Don’t think about it, he tells himself. Don’t think about it. Hold out a little longer. Get out of this room first.

_ I don’t know. _

_ Oh, I think you do. _

_ I really don’t. _

She slams a hand on the table, and Taako flinches.  _ People are dead. There are families in mourning right outside that door, chef, so what do you propose I tell them? _

Taako isn’t surprised. He’s in shock, he’s shaking and there’s a ringing in his ears, but he isn’t surprised. He knew when they started to collapse, when he got dragged away and locked in this room. He knew, and it doesn’t make the confirmation any easier.

The woman is still talking to him, but he takes a few seconds to push past the shock and think. Take stock. Assess. He doesn’t have time to wait until after he’s out of the room. Ten seconds to figure out a few key facts about his life as it currently stands.

One, the show is gone. Done. He may as well burn the stagecoach to the ground. None of his work means anything in the light what just happened.

Two, he knows why. It had to be the elderberries; he should have double-checked him. He always double-checks berries and fiddly ingredients like that when he uses magic on them, his transmutation just isn’t solid enough for anything less. He can’t remember if he checked them. How could he forget to check?

Three, he’s killed people. It shouldn’t be the last item on this list, and somewhere in the back of his head he’s sneering at himself because even he should have known better than to expect anything better from the pragmatist. He knows who he is, now, as a person: nothing good. Incompetent at best. People are dead.

She asks again:  _ What happened? _

And he says:  _ It must have been the elderberries.  _

She frowns. She tells him that his audience was poisoned with arsenic.

~~~

The woman’s name is Julia, and between her and her husband Magnus, Sazed is found out. The dead are buried during one service that the entire town attends; there aren’t as many graves as there could have been, but there are still too many. 

Magnus asks Taako what he’ll do now. Taako doesn’t know. The show is dead, and he doesn’t have anywhere in particular that he needs to be. 

Magnus offers him the chance to stay for a while, and to Taako’s surprise, Julia seconds the offer. For some reason she doesn’t blame Taako for the poisoning. He doesn’t know how she’s forgotten already that the poison was meant for him when sometimes it’s all he can think about, but he accepts the opportunity for what it is.

Magnus and Julia are kind. They’re trusting. They’re not naive, but they let people into their lives and somehow it works for them. Taako wonders what it must be like, to live a life where your trust is rewarded. He’s never had that. He wonders who he would be if he had.

Taako doesn’t have much to do; he lurks and watches while Julia and Magnus work in the shop, and while Julia cooks at night and Magnus sketches designs for furniture and buildings.

One night, Julia hands him a bowl.  _ I know you can cook, chef. You might as well help out.  _

He doesn’t want to. The smell of garlic still makes him sick. But it’s hard to say no to Julia, both because she’s disturbingly friendly and could probably put him into a headlock if he refuses.

They talk about their cooking. Julia pulls out her family recipes, all in different handwritings on little cards that fit into a box. Taako talks about his aunt’s recipes, safely stored in his memory where the risks of travel can’t get to them. There’s more there in common, in the steps and ingredients, than either of them expected. They work next to each other at the table, and it’s as easy as breathing.

Taako wonders if it’s always so easy to cook with someone else. He doesn’t think so, and he doesn’t know what makes this time different. It’s probably Julia, he decides; Julia is something entirely unique.

Taako feels very lucky. It’s a first. He tries not to get used to the feeling.

~~~

Taako finds out why the name “Kalen” was so important all at once one day. Magnus had just left with his rocking chair, which Julia loved and Taako deemed “passable” to Magnus’s huge, booming laughter. Steven pats Magnus on the back and they all watch him walk down the road out of town for a while.

It’s a good morning. Taako helps Julia and Steven with some errands around the shop while mentally planning what he’ll need to pick up from the market later. He’s starting to experiment in the kitchen again. Julia and Magnus have both been enthusiastic taste-testers, and it’s… nice. It feels just a little like his aunt’s house, which isn’t a feeling he thought he would ever find again.

There’s a noise. He feels it more than he hears it, rumbling beneath him. Taako doesn’t know what to make of it. He looks at Julia and Steven, across the room from him. 

Another rumble, and the room tilts wildly. The sound of stone cracking and sliding is deafening. There’s no time for thinking. Everything is falling, breaking, screaming. There’s no time. Taako reaches out.

And suddenly, there’s more magic than Taako has ever felt before, and it’s too much but it’s also too late to stop it from happening.

Everything else, though… everything else stops.

There’s a scene of destruction in progress surrounding Taako. He can see the furniture in the air, mingling with the crushed bones of the shop. Julia and Steven are suspended where they were, the floor beneath them already broken to pieces. There’s no way to survive.

Taako tries anyway. He’s beaten the odds before.

The scene is something surreal, something from a story. A town of people, suspended in the air, slowly lowers through the rubble and to the ground. Everything remains frozen until moments after they land. 

Someone has to tell Taako about it later. The magic is too much, too distracting, and he passes out as soon as he reaches the ground. The memory of the magic and how he reached it is hazy at best.

There are still injuries, and a few deaths. Most of the deaths are Kalen and his men. There’s so much to repair and do, but everyone has time, it seems, to talk to Taako. Julia tells Taako that he’s a hero. The rest of Raven’s Roost seems to agree. Taako doesn’t.

There’s no good way to tell them that he didn’t mean to save most of them. It was a fluke. Taako had only really been trying to save Julia; the rest was accidental. It was mostly out of his control, just an instinct to hold onto… something that he couldn’t name.

Julia seems to know what he’s thinking, even if doesn’t say it.  _ You’re a hero whether you like it or not, chef _ , she tells him, smiling while she hands him a bowl as they cook.  _ And we appreciate what you did, so deal with it. Just so you know, you’re stuck with all of us now. We like to keep heroes around. _

Taako takes the reassurance for what it is - another offer to stay. And so he stays.

Sometimes the intentions don’t matter as much as the outcome, Taako decides, watching Magnus running back to meet Julia along the road a few days later. It didn’t matter that Sazed only meant to kill one person, and that Taako only meant to save one. What actually happens sometimes matters more.


End file.
